Posted In: Reflective posts
Metadata is data that describes data containing specific information like type, length, textual description, and other characteristics.
There are three main types of metadata:
Descriptive - used for discovering and identifying assets, for example, includes elements like title, abstract, author, and relevant keywordsStructural - indicates how a digital asset is organized, for example, how pages in a book are organized to form chaptersAdministrative - relates to the technical source of a digital asset, for example, the file type and how the asset was createdFor our Hands-on Activity this week, Dr. Pilsch instructed us to add a list of categories to our blog post, install a category page, then add it to our website menu helping our users navigate our site. Adding a category page is extremely useful for keeping a website organized and assisting users in navigating quickly by narrowing down the options and guiding them to their desired topic. In terms of the class, I picked adding two categories - reflective post & activity post. Overall, Dr. Pilsch did a great job explaining how to use metadata to categorize our posts. The coding was easy to understand and simple to add to our GitHub.
After researching more about metadata, I found in digital images, when you take a photo, a bunch of metadata will be gathered and saved. Types of metadata elements include name, title, type, owner, descriptions, tags, time, date, color depth, resolution, and location. More specifically, the size of the image can include side dimensions and units of measurement. Metadata can also specify the resolution of the picture. Metadata has always been right in front of my eyes after taking a photo, and I never knew.
Text documents like Microsoft Word & Google Docs will collect some standard metadata and enable you to add your fields for each document. Typical areas are title, subject, author, company, status, creation date and time, characters, words, paragraphs, and page numbers. Other text document processors collect the same thing, so it is limited to only Microsoft Word & Google Docs.
When you open a book, it includes multiple types of metadata on the outside and inside. Types of elements have the title, author name, publisher and copyright details, description on the back, table of contents, index, and page numbers. Electronic books will not have as many metadata elements as a physical copy, but metadata is present overall.
Metadata is important because it generates the ability to find the right files using associated keywords, understanding the content, using files correctly, managing assets more efficiently, and re-arranging them by specific criteria, i.e., title.
Believe it or not, but we use metadata in so many things! Some examples include search engines, finding a friend on Facebook, looking up YouTube videos, finding a recipe in a cookbook, searching for an article on a database, and more.
Out of all twenty-one years, I surprisingly have never heard of the term metadata. I see metadata everywhere daily but never knew the term, so I enjoyed reading all about it!